Office Hours, #7, Wednesday

[raspberryturk]

... Aw, shit. It had been so long since Reno had spent time in his office. He'd gotten kinda familiar with it, what, back when the parents were on the island, way back? But he'd gone and told the Rookie's Rookie that he'd be here today, in case she wanted to talk. And anyhow, there was always shit to do.

Maybe he could hammer out lesson plans that would give him some kind of edge over that jerkass in the red coat.

Yeah. And he could write it in the dust that had settled on his desk over the months, too. Jeez.

[Reno's door is open!]

Comments

[withoutverona]

And lo, his phone rang, which would at least give the impression he was working.

A mildly sulky Romeo was on the other end of the line. Reno had failed to be around over the New Year; this was clearly unacceptable.

... even if Romeo made absolutely no advance plans, yes.

[raspberryturk]

Hey, Reno had been around! Or, well, at least Doji had managed to find him. He'd gotten snow down the back of his jacket for his troubles, anyhow.

"Yo!"

[withoutverona]

"Yo," Romeo repeated lazily. "How have you been? I missed you last weekend."

Unless he personally dumped the snow, it didn't count!

[OOC: Heh. This is why I should check in instead of making assumptions. Sorry.]

[raspberryturk]

"Hey, Romeo!" Reno near-instantly broke into a grin at hearing his friend's voice. "I've... been!"

There were worse states of being than simply being, right?

"Missed you too, man. Had to chase your girlfriend down with a fistful of snow, though. We must'a just missed one another, huh?"

[No problem! The post was huuuuge that day.]

[withoutverona]

"We must have," Romeo agreed. "Though if it saved me from a chase with snow, I may be a bit less sorry about it. She was threatening to attack any redheads in suits on sight, I'll have you know."

[raspberryturk]

"Well, jeez, she's lucky I showed up, then. Otherwise, she might'a been way under-quota, yo."

And that would have been a very, very sad thing.

"Wasn't entirely plannin' on goin' to the dance at all, yo. But I needed to stretch my legs, get my exercise, that kinda thing. It didn't suck too bad without me, did it?"

[withoutverona]

"It was horrible. I wept an ocean every second I was there," Romeo teased, then relented. "In truth? I think it did Yurika some good to get away from Tokyo. Things have been difficult for her at work of late. It did well to be elsewhere -- especially an elsewhere with schnapps and snowballs to throw."

[raspberryturk]

Oh, jeez. That didn't sound good.

"Yeah?" Reno frowned thoughtfully. "What's been goin' on over there? Or is this one of them things that you can't really talk about over the phone?"

Reno knew Doji's line of work intimately. It seemed like a good idea to ask.

[withoutverona]

"Some of the people she works with have been hurt," Romeo said vaguely. "She would be better to speak on it than I would. I just -- worry for her. They found a bullet, Christmas week."

Which meant he wasn't sure how much he could talk about, and was limiting himself to the most basic facts.

"She said nothing to you?"

[raspberryturk]

Reno shrugged a little, not that Romeo could see, and shook his head. Also not really visible, he supposed.

"She mostly got to talkin' to me about my bein' an idiot around Ino," Reno confessed. "News kinda spreads fast about whenever I do somethin' stupid, huh?"

He'd definitely have to get in touch with Doji about this bullet thing.

[withoutverona]

"Now I know you aren't dating Ino," Romeo said as he leaned back in his chair, because that would be wrong on about eighteen levels. "And neither of them has said anything to me. The news turned into a slug before it found me. What has happened?"

[raspberryturk]

"... Egh, no. Not about to start datin' the Rookie."

That was Tseng's shtick.

"Ino had a bit of a rough time of it a few weeks back, and she an' I got into a spar." Reno chuckled faintly, though it was a slightly tense one. There was more going on between he and Ino now, since her trip to Gaia with Zack, than there had been before, all of it messy. He wouldn't assault Romeo with that clusterfuck, though. There were some things that people just didn't need thrown at them. "She got a little carried away, an' I made a misstep. Gashed my thumb open on a poisoned weapon, zoto."

It had been an adventure.

[withoutverona]

"Is that a bit like saying I used to get in the way of Arthur's fists when we trained?" Romeo said, in a dry tone that couldn't cover his genuine concern. "Are you all right? Is she?"

[awakestheghosts]

And look, there was the Rookie's Rookie knocking on the door. She poked her head in and gave Reno a shy but game smile.

"Is this a good time? I can come back later."

[raspberryturk]

"Ain't no better time than now," Reno replied, quirking her a little grin. "Come on in, yo. Dust off a chair."

Or stand. Whichever you preferred, Chloe.

[awakestheghosts]

Chloe smiled again and nodded as she came in. She made sure to shut the door, because she trusted Reno, but she wasn't so keen about someone accidentally overhearing what they would talk about.

"Thank you, Reno, I appreciate you being here to talk to."

[raspberryturk]

Reno shrugged a little, leaning back in his own chair a little.

"It's my job," he noted, idly. And if he was referring to his job as a teacher, a Turk, or just the guy who looked after the Rookies, the world might never know. "What's up, Chloe?"

[awakestheghosts]

"So, Tori told me that she told you that I was in trouble and that people wanted to kill me. I figured that it would be a good idea if you knew the whole story." She sighed. "And to be honest, I'm tired of being scared all of the time that someone is going to show up here. I'm tired of worrying that one night I'll just disappear and no one here will have any idea what has happened. I've told Ino and Karla that people want to kill me, and I've told Mitchell some of why people want to kill me. However, I haven't told any of them the full story."

Mainly because she was a little bit worried about what anyone was going to think about her when she did. Which didn't explain why she was risking telling everything to Reno, now did it?

[raspberryturk]

Well, Reno was nothing if not open-minded. He gave Chloe a smile that was a little softer than his usual, and nodded a bit.

"Well, I'm all ears, if you feel alright tellin' the full story to me, yo."

There was no promising that after he heard it, he wouldn't catch a portal to the mainland and shove his baton up someone's ass. But that was totally a normal, well-adjusted response to things like this, right?

NFB

[awakestheghosts]

She chewed on her lip.

"See, these people run this place where they like to play games with people's lives and they messed with mine long before I was born. There's something that runs in my family. We see ghosts. It drove my uncle insane and he killed himself long before I was born. These people contacted my mother because they knew that she wanted a baby but was afraid to subject me to insanity." Yes, she knew all of this probably sounded insane anyway. "They told her they could help with that... that they knew what gene to turn off when I was conceived to prevent that from ever happening." Her eye twitched. "They lied. Oh, they were correct about the gene, but they didn't approach her to help her. They wanted to experiment with her genes and see what would happen. So when she was pregnant they did these experiments on her to mess with me."

Re: NFB

[raspberryturk]

Reno was nodding as he listened, his face a very careful mask of serenity. Or, well, as serene as Reno ever got.

Really, this didn't sound like anyone he knew of at all.

Like, say, his co-teacher. Or either of his co-teacher's BFFs, Angeal or Sephiroth.

"What happened to her?"

Re: NFB

[awakestheghosts]

She took a breath. "Mom was fine until she was killed in a car wreck when I was little." Okay, younger. "We didn't know for a long time that they had done anything to me because when I first started seeing ghosts and being afraid to go near things, I was a toddler. Therefore, it was easy to think I was just having imaginary friends. For awhile it stopped, but then about three weeks before I came here last year, I was attacked at my old school by the ghost of someone who had dies years before. I was freaked out and screaming and because I tried to go through a window to get away from him, I was classified as suicidal and schizophrenic. I was sent to a home for juveniles with problems." She took a deep breath. "I'm not crazy, Reno. I'm not. I thought I was and I even took their medications like they told me to. They didn't work because they had made me into something that they couldn't control... just like they have done to several kids. When my first friend there lost control of her pyrokinetic powers, they..." Chloe swallowed and shook her head. "They had her killed. Oh, they told us all that she was at a new hospital that could help her, but her ghost came to me a few nights after she left the home. Because, Lyle House wasn't just a juvenile home. It was one of the places that these people set up to confine and control their experiments."

Re: NFB

[raspberryturk]

"I believe you, Rookie. I've seen plenty weirder than kids who can talk to the dead, yo."

And now, Reno was biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. Well, fuck. It stank of ShinRa, up and down.

"That friend of yours, is she from that place, too?"

He kind of figured it would be helpful, knowing if they were both on the run, or if it was just Chloe. And if it was two of them, then he'd have twice the reason to find someone to beat to death with a baton, wouldn't he?

Re: NFB

[awakestheghosts]

"Tori? Yeah, I met her there. See, they thought that they could rehabilitate us ones who manifested our powers while out of their care. Her mother is one of those people. We escaped when I found a list of names of kids... and they had notes that they weren't sure if they were going to terminate me or not. Because, I could do more than talk to the dead, and they didn't expect that. Reno... I can raise the dead. I can't make them come back to life, but I can raise their bodies and force their spirits back into them no matter what condition they're in and they have to obey me. I can't control it, yet, because I don't know enough about it. When they realized that I could do that and that I couldn't control it and that they might not be able to control me..." Well, she was sure Reno could do the math on that one. "Derek decided that we had to get out because I could disappear at any point."

"There are four of us that managed to escape from there. Tori and the others, they have powers that can be used in a fight and they're tougher or more street tough than I am. That and my father -- that I was told not to trust -- is putting out advertisements and ransom for me. We think that Lyle Group is behind that. I was sent here for that, and because my friends know that if I thought Lyle got one of them... I'd try to go and get them away no matter what it would do to me." She looked at him. "This is the second time that I escaped. The first time... they got me again because my aunt took me back to them."

Re: NFB

[raspberryturk]

Family. Damned if you got 'em, damned if you don't. Reno was flat-out scowling, now, furrowing his eyebrows as he worked over her words.

"But here'll only do you any good until you gotta leave again," he noted, almost casually. Almost. "You know what you're gonna do then?"